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tv   CNN Newsroom  CNN  November 8, 2012 8:00am-9:00am PST

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facebook.com/carolcnn if you want to continue the conversation. thank you for joining me today. i'm carol costello. newsroom continues right now with ashleigh banfield. >> hi, everybody. it's 11:00 on the east coast and 8:00 a.m. on the west coast. here's some phrases for you. high wind, wet snow, travel snarled, power lost. any other time here in the northeast we might just call that november, but coming just a week and a half after super storm sandy, this garden variety nor'easter is just wrong and it is cruel, you might say. and here is how some new yorkers would actually like to say something on television, this sucks. it just does. 60-mile-an-hour wind gusts? that's the kind of wind that knocks out power to tens of thousands of homes. people who probably already went without power for a week. businesses, also, that hadn't lost it during sandy or had just gotten it back, out again.
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storm surges threatening the water front areas and parts of connecticut that today have more than a foot of snow. cnn's deb feyerick is in the community of gerrittson beach in brooklyn. how the do things look there now, deb? >> reporter: you know, they don't look that great, actually, ashleigh. this entire area was under water after the hurricane. now it is covered with snow. look down this way. okay. the water is at the end of this block. cars coming up to us right now. but the water was at the end of the block. it was not considered an evacuation zone, zone a,because of the fact that there's a parkway and they felt that would break the wave. it didn't. now people are describing it as a mini tsunami that they were running to try of get away from it. by the time they were able to get any evacuation orders, one man said he was up to his chest and it was simply too late. they didn't get the word. over here, you've got a light, a generator that's lighting up this area. a relief center. one of the assistant chief told me a little earlier that, in
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fact, people last night were together and they were crying. and i want to bring in wendy taylor here. wendy, your mom is out here and she is really -- how is she holding up? >> she's holding up as best to be expected right now. she has been in the they were hood for 72 years. she's lived in the house 50 years. she grew up here. and we're basically fending for ourselves right now. we are left to our own devices, to help each other because there has been no help from anybody else. >> reporter: are you getting information? we've seen a couple of people from fema, we've seen a couple of insurance people. are you still feel that they're just not reaching you? >> there's not enough presence here. we are definitely waiting on fema. we haven't spoken to them yet. she was not covered by her homeowners insurance for anything. basically everybody is just kind of waiting to be told what to do next. >> reporter: is she -- you described her a little while ago. is she vulnerable right now? is she sort of on her last --
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>> yeah, i mean, everybody is on the verge of cracking right now and fed up and frustrated beyond belief. we really are. it's sad to see this happening to the neighborhood and to the surrounding neighborhoods. from i understand, everybody is on their own right now. the city has not been here. we saw two red cross trucks the whole time in lefb days. >> reporter: wendy taylor, thank you so much. >> you're very welcome. >> it's interesting because, ashly, when you talk to people, you just have to stand here and people will yell out what they need. they need generators. they need additional help. they need licensed plumbers, electricians. people that can help them get back on their feet. the scope of the tragedy is so huge there simply aren't enough people to come out and help. they need people to come and deliver some foods because they are still in their homes, no place to go. they are freezing basically, ashleigh. >> it's unbelievable. and to see that just off to your left there's a relief center that ended up getting hit with this kind of weather. it's remarkable. stand by the you will for a
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moment. i want to get over to karen maginnis in our extreme weather center to try to get a picture of where we're at. i got to show you something. i don't think you've seen this yet, karen. this is the picture i snapped out of the airplane of my window last night as i was landing at laguardia airport. 6:00 at night, which was really in the thick part of the nor'easter. that's the jet way filled with snow. and it took more than a dozen attempts for that jet way to make it to our airplane because it was blowing so hard in the wind. took 40 minutes to get off the plane because they couldn't get that jet way up to the airplane. i didn't feel the winds this morning. i just saw buckets of snow. >> yeah. and, ashleigh, those winds were blowing between 50 and 60 miles an hour. visibility was greatly reduced. we were looking at some pretty significant delays yesterday. and that northeastern corridor. now the storm system is winding its way just up the eastern seaboard towards new england. its impact there is not going to be as widely felt as it was felt
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acro across new jersey and new york. take a look at the snowfall totals. in some areas, more than a foot. but generally speaking, jfk, laguardia, also into statin island, generally the snowfall ams were running about three to six inches. we've got some pictures out of yonkers and they had some major difficulty driving on the roadways there. numerous accidents also reported, but show you a little bit better picture as we take a live look. this out of massachusetts. they're going along the roads there just a little bit of snowfall on the roads. we haven't really seen any snarls. but they're saying along route 128, yeah, the wind was really blowing there yesterday, as well. but moving along, this is from wcvb, affiliate in the boston area. the winds are gusting up to near hurricane intensity. we'll look at gusty winds along the northern new england coast for this afternoon.
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>> all right, karen. thank you. those pictures look just like my neighborhood. the brutal nor'easter, no way to put it, it's rubbing salt deep into the wounds of so many people. especially people in seaside heights. remember seaside heights, the jersey shore town so pounded by super storm sandy just nine days ago. these were the images we showed you a day after. it damaged or demolished the homes, the cars. streets, where there aren't streets before. rivers where there aren't rivers before. nothing was despaired. that ferris wheel and the roller coaster decimated. damaged or destroyed. mayor bill acres talked to us about his town's heartache and emotional and physical pain literally hours after that storm hit passed over his town. have a listen. >> my job is managing, their job -- they're physically out there. we're riding around at 2:00 in the morning and we're pulling people out of the water. we're riding around and you see
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these people and these car slow down in the street. and these people do this with no regard for anything other than they want to do the right thing and help. >> mayor acres is back with me live today. he joins me by phone. mayor, thank you for taking the time. i can't even imagine where you are in the clean-up efforts from sandy and now the nor'easter. how are you managing? >> we're managing. i think we're doing as well as can be expected. i think we're probably doing a little bit better than most, in that so many of these out of state crews have come in along with our local people, that we've gotten a lot of our telephone poles back in place. they've been able to work on the streets. the d.o.t. has been unbelievable in getting our streets cleared and accessible for all these different utility companies to get in and start trying to restore some services. >> so that the pictures i'm seeing on the screen right now, we're driving along the street and looking at these destroyed homes now with snowbanks in
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front of them. none of the homes that i'm seeing on this screen right now could be inhabitable. mayor bloomberg was talking about trying to house 40,000 displaced people. where do you put all the people from the homes i'm seeing on the screen that are now troubled with the increasing snow? >> you know, we're fortunate that we're a little bit, of course, a lot smaller community and people have turned to friends and family for a lot of support. but the shelters are overflowing. we had a meeting with fema and they put that as their number one priority, relocation. because there's a really huge push to get the school systems back in service and the children back to school. >> mayor, your kids are back in school yet? this is a week and a half. they're not back in school yet? >> no. we're -- school was postponed until the 12th, next monday. >> wow. >> the schools are used as shelters right now. so until they can be cleared
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out, you can't get the kids back in school. >> and what's the power situation? you know, in looking at the pictures i'm seeing i can't manaimagine that the power grid even up and running. are you getting spotty service, are there areas that can be serviced? >> we have our -- we have our -- we have three generators. three huge generators capable of powering the town, partial power right now, doing the services that we need at this particular point. we do have some restored water service, but from jersey, central power and light, they're working on the distribution end of their service. and we are unfortunately on the transmission end. we need our transmission lines. we have five transmission lines bringing power to seaside heights that have not been restored. >> i did not think that -- >> it has not been restored. >> i didn't think we were going to be looking at these pictures all over again now in a
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blizzard. i am so sorry for you once again. it sounds like a broken record. but, mayor, i hope you guys get the help you need and you get those kids back in school and people back to work and get some of those houses demolished that need to be and fixed that can be. sir, thanks so much. >> thank you. and thank you for all your good work in helping us. take care. >> the least we can do is let americans know what you're going through and certainly, you know, you can impact your world, folks. please call the red cross. please give at this point. the nor'easter is the latest in a series of problems that very few people can manage. there's your screen. you can see how many people effected. impactyourworld@cnn.com is a way you can help. also, coming up after the break, the business of getting this country back on track. the election is over. the election is over. begins with back pain and a choice. take advil, and maybe have to take up to four in a day. or take aleve, which can relieve pain all day with just two pills.
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okay. so you thought the election was over? think again. balance of power in congress may appear just as it was. democrats still rule the senate. republicans the house. but the fight continues and a few of those house race, 48 hours after voters were going to the polls, including a heated contest in florida where con tro version shul republican allen west is trying to hold on to his seat there. also in palm springs, the late widow of sonny bono is not giving up her fight either. let's talk about the senate. surprising or not surprising? >> surprising, i guess, because the odds were against the democrats when this cycle first started. depending the seats up for grabs. the numbers are still changing. the numbers are final, final two
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races were called yesterday. 54 democrats will be in the new senate, including one independent. 45 republicans in the new senate. and then there's that one independent from maine, angus king, former independent governor. will he caucus with the democrat or republicans? the thought is the democrat which would bring them to 55. plus two from where they were in the last senate. remember, ashleigh, also, 20 of the senators will be women in the next senate. very interesting. quickly to the house of representatives where this is -- we have ateight more races outstanding. 233 republicans so far. 194 democrats. 8 unresolved races. if the democrats capture a few of those they may ba up to 198 or 99, plus five or six for them. ashleigh, you were just in florida on the presidential side, we still don't know if that's going to go for obama or for romney. so the election is truly not over yet. >> well, get your dinner in the fridge because that's going to take a few more days. i'll get to that in a bit. and no time off for you until
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you get us the results. thank you, paul. appreciate it. good solid work from all of our elections folk chos have worked around the clock for a long, long time, including the last couple of years putting it to the. just to let you know both sides in this divided congress are promising, promising to work together, to head off fiscal disaster. we're going to look at that real deep like with christine romans in a couple of minutes. 100% mmm... wow, that is mmm... it's so mmm you might not believe it's a hundred calories. new yoplait greek 100. it is so good.
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former congresswoman gabrielle giffords, her recovery has been defined by small steps, incremental milestones since her assassination attempt. today she will take on perhaps the most painful and most significant figure in her bat e battle, and it's that man. her would be assassinator, loughner. giffords with her husband, retired astronaut mark kelly, is going to come face to face with loughner for his sentencing. it will be her first encounter with him since this horrifying scene in a supermarket parking not in tucson, arizona. the first time loughner whipped out a pistol, pointed it at her head and fired. three years later, justice, maybe a little closure perhaps somewhat for giffords and the families of the six murdered victims that loughner took out and the 12 others that he also wounded. >> they're angry, the first time you see him. and -- but you calm down a
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little bit. >> i don't know how i'll react. so i'm planning on speaking. i might change my mind. but i really do have some things i want to say to the judge and to him. >> loughner will be sentenced to life in prison, no possibility for parole, ever. all of that under a plea agreement. his sentencing will take place less than an hour from now. and ms. giffords' husband mark kelly will be speaking on behalf of her and, of course, her family. we have a team inside the courtroom right now and we're going to bring you the details just as soon as that sentencing happens.
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well, the president thinks
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that he has reached the top of a mountain and in doing so on tuesday night, he did, but unfortunately he's also getting an up close and personal view of the fiscal cliff on the other side. yeah. so now it's back to that pesci issue of governing and wrangling that pesky place we call congress. how is that looking? >> this president, republican majority here in the house stands ready to work with you, to do what's best for our country. >> it's better to dance than to fight. it's better to work together. everything doesn't have to be a fight. >> well, maybe, not always anyway. cumbayah. christine romans is here, however long that's going to last, the cumbayah moment. >> i can feel so much better, thanks. >> you are not a good actress but you are very good with business. fiscal cliff, no matter what they just said, what's the reality? >> they're at a starting point now and that's important here. even though you have the same players, i think it's important, you said i'm an actress. i'm going to liken it to a play.
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we had the intermission, right, now we're back. they changed the scene. they changed the set. they've changed the costumes. and we're going to finish this thing off and they're going to avoid the fiscal cliff. they all privately agree that we're t not going 20 go over. the president said it in his last debate when he said, it's not going to happen. it's not going to happen if white house has even been telling companies, you don't have to send out layoff notices, which they have to do by law before they have layoffs, because it's not going to happen. we just don't know how they're going to fix it. what's it going to mean? it's going to mean tax increases for you, $2000 in tax increases according to the tax policy center for middle income family. you know it's going to be ebbs piring tax cuts like the bush tax cuts. everyone would have higher tax rates. alternative minimum tax would patch, go away. payroll tax holiday, $1,000 a year, i could go on and on and on. defense cuts. blah, blah, blah. it would be startling to the economy and pish you into a recession. they don't want that to happen.
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>> i don't, either. i have been feeling a bit maybe in denial. much like the doomsday prophecies. i always say, wow, that's sounds soer use, that's not going to happen. i feel the same we about the fiscal cliff. i don't know why. what i don't understand is how wall street, things fell out of bottom yesterday. much of it is being attributed to the fiscal cliff. which, by the way, how does that have any bearing on whether it was obama or romney. that fiscal cliff is there. >> one things i think stocks did not continue yesterday to si sell-off in part because of the sound bites you play, the first day after the election, the major players coming out. >> people are that gullible? >> it's not gullible. investors need a signal they will get this fixed. the stock market is still down. it didn't rally. the world needs a signal the biggest economy and the biggest democracy in the world is not going to fall apart over partisan politics. >> the president's victory speech where he said he need to work together, et cetera, that's
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not enough of a signal? >> they need to show how. i need to see them dancing, not fighting. i need to see exactly what john boehner, the speaker of the house, means by, we're open to additional revenues if, you know, we need to know what that's going to be. the they will be the classic washington horse trading start to begin but we haven't had that horse trade for a long time. that in of itself is progress. >> too busy campaigning. >> you and i have lots of segments ahead. that is specifically revenue, what that means. is it just taxes or what else can it be? >> closing loopholes. finding ways to get the economy to grow. lots of ways to grow revenue for you. >> no vacation for you, either. [ male announcer ] a european-inspired suspension, but not from germany. ♪ a powerful, fuel-efficient engine, but it's not from japan. ♪ it's a car like no other... inspired by a place like no other. introducing the all-new 2013 chevrolet malibu,
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the thing that people always ask me is where do you eat in
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cuba and i always say, polinar's, people's homes, private restaurants. the cubans are able to have in their homes. let me go to one of my favorites here in downtown havana. one of the best ones that guy to. ♪ >> before you go to cuba, it looked like what it was, someone's home. they have a bar man here making mojitos. it's set up like a restaurant but it's not a government restaurant. it's someone's business. and until recently that's not something that was very common in cuba. the laws have been changing. a lot of people to have their own businesses. this one is famous for seafood
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so i think that's what we're going to try today. they just brought me this really beautiful plate of lobster and shrimp and fish and it looks great. i have to say sitting out here on this terrace, incredible view. havana is really nice breeze. it's just a really relaxing place to be. i can't think of a better place to be right now. this looks fantastic. i'm going go ahead and dig in. ♪ introducing the new 13-inch macbook pro, ♪ with the stunning retina display. ♪ for the pro in all of us. i have a cold... i took dayquil, but i still have a runny nose. [ male announcer ] truth is, dayquil doesn't work on runny noses.
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who will go and who will stay? president obama's in place for four more years, but some of his top aides might not be. in fact, several won't stick around. secretary of state hillary clinton and the treasury secretary tim geithner both said they are not too interested in a second term. wolf blitzer joins us now. wolf, how big a shake-up are we going to see in the cabinet and, as far as those two are concerned, is it likely that they will honor what they've been saying and is it likely that other people will get
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shuffled out, who may not have been expecting it? >> there always is at the beginning of a second term of any administration, whether bill clinton's second term or george w. bush's second term, and now a barack obama second term. there always are people who leave the cabinet either because they want to leave or because they're exhausted or because the president and the vice president want them to leave for whatever reasons. hillary clinton has made it abundantly clear four years is the most traveled ever secretary of state is more than enough. she's ready to move on and do some other stuff. who might replace her, you ask, might be john kerry, the chairman of the foreign committee. susan rice, she certainly was on a very, very short list of possible secretaries of state. but in the aftermath of benghazi and the war, that could be a problem because of what she said on those five sunday television shows and republican anger at her as far as the confirmation process might be concerned. so we'll wait and see on that. i think you're right, timothy
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geithner, the secretary of the treasury, he made it clear he wants to move on. who might replace him. speculation that jack lieu, the white house chief of staff who twice served as the budget director, omb director and obama administration earlier in the clinton administration, he could be a candidate. there are others as well. i suspect eric holder, the attorney general, might move on and we'll see what happens on that front. but a lot of the other cabinet secretaries, i think are going to stay. i think they would like to stay and they probably will. so it's maybe not going to be as huge a shake-up as there often. >> i want to play for you something that soledad o'brien had on "starting point" this morning. it was an interview with hutchison who has been in congress a very long time and on her way out so perhaps she can speak a lot more freely than she might have otherwise. she was talking about in a very blunt fashion, how a couple of congressional candidates may have done some serious damage, particularly among women voters
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on their comments about rape. have a look. >> all right. >> i think we had republican candidates who got very high profile and said some very stupid things. >> aiken. >> uh-huh. i think that really tainted the party even though mitt romney came right out and said, this is not right, we disagree with this. the party leadership did the same thing. no one embraced todd aiken after he said those things, including the republican campaign committees. but yet it was used in the political sense against us and it was -- it was -- i think it's the feeling that republicans don't get it. >> so, wolf, here's my question. she's not the only one coming in with some -- the after-the-fact armchair quarterbacking, quarterbacking anyway. there are a lot of conservative wlos are very critical of their own party right now suggesting that maybe they just didn't make the right pick for the head of
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their party. my question to you is do you think that the conventional wisdom is they picked someone not conservative enough or did they pick someone who was too conservative for what has become a changing demographic society in this section? >> i think there's no doubt they were close. they got very close in several of these battleground states and mitt romney, you know, with a few things going differently, potentially could have even had a win in some of these battleground states. that could have made the difference. but, sure, there were plenty of mistakes. that whole todd aiken, richard murdoch uproar. when you had not one but two republican candidates for senate talking about rape and abortion. that's not going to necessarily, you know, be positive, positive spillover. usually there's spillover from the top candidates down the ballot, if you will, downballot. this particular case, it went up. and it hurt, i think the republican brand, particularly among women and that's why you had that lopsided gender gapping
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into going into the election. you had three or four days when everybody was obsessed with the super storm sandy. it's not necessarily that chris christie helped the president so much but the conversation changed from what seemed to be some momentum going for romney and it just halted. it just stopped completely while the country was focused in, understandably, on what was going on in new jersey and statin island and long island and elsewhere. >> right. all right. wolf, thank you for your insight, as always. so appreciated. great work on the election. i know you were probably very tired. you deserve lots of days off. to our viewers, don't forget that wolf -- he doesn't take a break. he's amazing. he's going to be back on 4:00 eastern. one of the things he will probably talk about as well is the effect of the hispanic vote. it was a big factor in the republicans are going to have to look into that deeply. that's in "the situation room"
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of course here on cnn. ♪ ♪ ♪ hi dad. many years from now, when the subaru is theirs... hey. you missed a spot. ...i'll look back on this day and laugh. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru.
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lot about this and from becoming victims themselves. h is what they're doing. they're reliving the last 15 minutes of another young person's life. sarah hoy is checking it all out in this week's story. >> welcome. i work with gunshot patients. how many of you guys know somebody who has been shot? >> reporter: philadelphia educator scott charles is on a mission to save young lives. charles and amy goldberg, chief trauma surgeon cofounded the cradle to grave program to help reduce gun violence in the city of brotherly love. >> what we're going to do today is take you behind the scenes, pull back the curtain and let you know what we do. >> reporter: the program brings local high school opportunities inside temple's trauma center to relive the final 15 minutes of life of a teen killed by gun violence. >> that young boy stood over lamont and fired ten more shots into him. >> you know, gun violence can kill. i think it's really our responsibility to prevent these
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kids from coming in. >> reporter: among america's largest cities, philadelphia's homicide rate is the wot with african-americans making 85% of the victims. >> you know, statistics suggest that as a young black man you have a greater chance of being shot and killed in philadelphia than you would have if you were a soldier serving in the conflicts in afghanistan or iraq. that's absurd to me. >> reporter: since 2006, more than 7,000 students have come to the cradle to the grave program. >> i don't want that to happen to me. i want to be able to live, be something my mom wants me to be. >> we want to really teach them the preciousness of life, that in an instant, your life can be changed forever. >> reporter: change they want for the better. sarah hoy, cnn, philadelphia. so who is black in america? is it being determined by the color of your skin, by your family, by what society says, or is it determined by somebody completely different? my colleague who is better than
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anyone else in the business on this one is going to examine provocative questions about skin color, discrimination, and race in a new documentary "who is black in america?" and 's premiering sunday, december 9th at 8:00 p.m. eastern only on cnn. what if there was a new way to deal with money that focused less on fees and more... on what matters? maybe your bank account is taking too much time and maybe it's costing too much money. introducing bluebird by american express and walmart. your alternative to checking and debit. it's loaded with features, not fees. because we think your money should stay where it belongs. with you. the value you expect. the service you deserve. it feels good to bluebird. get it at your local walmart. 100% new. 100% mmm... wow, that is mmm...
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i want to thank every american who participated in this election if. whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time, by the way, we have to fix that. >> president obama during his
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acceptance speech making a reference to florida. got to fix that. 12 years after the election debacle of 2000. the infamous hanging chads, the butterfly ballots. another presidential election is done but once again, not in the state of florida. that state is still counting ballots. we're two days past the election now. if electoral votes still unclaimed right now. unlike in 2000 those 29 electoral votes are at this point a nonfactor to the presidency. thank you. however, it doesn't change this fact. this was the unbelievable situation for a lot of people in florida. i was there. i saw it firsthand. long lines wrapping around for blocks on end. voters forced to wait for hours and hours in the dark and in the light. and one woman passing out after standing in that light sun for two hours. paramedics having to come to her t attention. no shade in those long lines in the florida sun. some still waiting to vote even after the election for mr. obama had been called. we had our winner and they were still trying to vote.
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outrageous. and remember, it didn't have to be this way again. the legislature led by republicans reduced early voting days. they took them down for 14 to 8 days. critics say it was done because democrats are the ones who tend to vote early. then there were those extraordinarily long ballots. here's just a sample. look out all of these issues. this is just an example of what was inside a ballot once you t got in there. not the actual ballot. in three language, sometimes it was 12 pages. it took a long time to get through that stuff standing there in your privacy booth. some people spent 30 minutes to vote to go through it all. the big question is now, not so much who will win florida, of course, but who is going to step up and fix this mess? it's ridiculous. who is responsible for it? who is going to be held accountable for it? you heard president obama, fix it. former florida governor charlie crist, a republican turned independent, had a telling explanation. in an interview with the huff post he slammed the current governor rick scott, republican,
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for refusing to extend early voting hours me said this, the only thing that makes any sense as to why this is happening and being done is voter suppression. that's unconscionable. i think it's just the wrong thing to do. and the right thing to do would be to sign an executive order to make sure this doesn't happen and you expand the hours. now, we reached out to governor rick scott to explain what i saw and what the world saw unfolding in florida because he ultimately is the answer to this. governor scott's office very politely declined our extension for the interview. this is what he said to us today through his office. thanks for the invite but the governor's schedule is already set today. i understand that, governor scott. you are a very busy man and we are two days after the election. i understand that. for the record we are going to keep pressing you for answers until we get them. we also called an e-mail to secretary of state. his public relations people said they were going to try to get him on the phone this hour, but
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he wasn't able to join us. we also reached out to other florida election officials who declined to come declined to come on tv with me to explain this, but the mayor of miami dade county said yes, and he joins us live from miami dade, florida, right now. >> thank you for stepping up to the plate and joining me. i have some very tough questions for you. i just spent a very uncomfortableably warm and frustrating two days in miami dade with a lot of people who were very, very nice and very pissed off. why on earth did this happen? you have plenty of experience with problems. how did it get so bad? >> well, this is a -- what you would call a perfect storm down here in florida in terms of our elections. without a doubt, we have some operational issues that we to take care of. i am convening a special council to look at our election sites and why it happened. for the vast majority of our
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election sites there were about ten that had unacceptably long times of waiting, and so those are the places we're going to focus in on, and we had the longest ballot in florida history. it probably took voters two and a half longer to vote. >> good point, mr. mayor. >> a long ballot. let me stop you right there because i want to ask you -- you just were elected -- i just checked out on the website here -- august 14th, 2012. presumably your voters and your constituency all had a chance to go to a polling place and fill out a ballot for you. why could you not have taken some of those congressional issues and perhaps put them into that election and maybe split them up and made that ballot a lot shorter? i saw that thing in the polling place where i was. nine pages. some people said it was a half hour just to read through it. it's not fair. >> well, the state -- a number of state constitutional amendments that had to go on our general election, and there was also some charter amendments in
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the county that also had to go on a general election. there are individual cities that also put their questions on the general election, and so that created this extraordinary long ballot. look, i sat -- >> but whose responsibility is it to say these are important issues, yes, but we don't have space for you in the interest of making sure people get their right to vote, which is far more important than anybody else's issues that they want to jam on to that. listen, everybody wants an issue on a ballot. at some point you have to cut it off. whose responsibility was it to say, no, you're too late, there are too many issues already on the ballot some. >> no, listen. the -- this is a -- you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. if you don't put state constitutional -- then they're going to say, well, not everybody got the right to vote on a general election on changing the state's constitution. if you don't put charter amendment on a general election, again, people say not everybody
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got to vote and the same thing happens with the city. damned if you do, damned if you don't. unfortunately, what happened is a lot of different entities, the state, county, cities decided put a lot of questions on the ballot on this particular ballot because it was a general election ballot. then we had the issue -- then we had the issue of redistricting. it was very, very late. look, in miami dade county the vast majority of the people, yes, it took some time, but it didn't take them six hours to vote. we're going to take a look at that. we're going to fix that. we also had fewer days of early voting, and that was changed by the state legislature, and signed into law by the governor. so we need to expand early voting hours again like we had in the past. we also need to expand the number of early voting sites that we had here in this county and other counties, and also we need to look at our own operational issues as to why it was that, you know, people took so long to get through the process. i want to explain one of the reasons is you have this extraordinarily long ballot that for me i was already knowledgeable about everything. it took me 10 to 15 minutes to
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get through that ballot. can you imagine somebody who didn't know everything? that's the reason. >> they were livid, as was i. from 4:00 in the morning on i watched people who had already waited four hours in prior lines early voting couldn't vote. came back and after six hours of lines over three days finally cast their ballot. took them half an hour. i know we're about to lose our satellite line with you, otherwise i would keep you on until the top of the hoe. i can't even tell right now, i know i'm going to lose you. go ahead, quickly. >> i want to say that -- i want to say that we've stopped -- we're done counting in miami dade county. one of the reasons that it took so long is that we had an unprecedented drop of over 55,000 absentee ballots. >> i saw that. >> those go through a completely different process. the signatures have to be verified by people that are trained in signature verification. that's why it took us a little bit longer. >> that part is fine. >> like the president said, we are going to fix this. >> okay. good. because, you know, what, we had this conversation -- not you --
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12 years ago when i was in this mess for 36 days. i had this conversation with many people before who said never again will you have to go through this in florida, and here i am. i'm getting too old, i hate to say it. listen, mayor jiminez, i really do appreciate. you are the only person who responded to our requests, and i am still going to hold the colleagues that you got up in state, ken -- and rick scott to task. ultimately they're at the top of this heat, and they need to answer to this. thank you so much, sir. >> can i say one more thing? >> yes. >> i need to -- okay, i need to apologize for those fine people, those fine voters that stood in line for six hours, and i have to tip my hat to them for standing in line for six hours and doing the right thing and voting. thank you. it's not going to happen again in miami dade county. >> i'm sure sorry to those people that ultimately after hours had to drop out for child care issues, for work, or for my other reason. thank you so much. i hope we talk on better terms at another time. coming up, we're also going it talk to wendy who is the director of the democracy program at nyu's brennan center
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for justice. she's going to talk about what it really means when you just have to stand that long and maybe not even get to vote. back after this. [ male announcer ] can a car be built around a state of mind? ♪ announcing the all-new 2013 malibu from chevrolet. ♪ with a remarkable new interior featuring the available chevrolet mylink infotainment system. this is where sophisticated styling begins. and where it ends? that's up to you. it's here -- the greatest malibu ever. ♪ capella university understands back from rough economic times. employees are being forced to do more with less. and the need for capable leaders is greater than ever.
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sow just heard me interviewing the mayor of miami dade county and asking what on earth is happening in florida? particularly your county, which experienced such long lines and such trouble for voters just trying to exercise their constitutional right. joining us is wendy whitesner, and i have to ask you in your knowledge, what recourse do people of florida have? how can this be fixed, and how do i know that the same thing isn't going to happen because i said these things back in 2000. >> unfortunately, you don't know. it is disheartening that florians care about participating in our democracy that they're willing to wait so long to do so, but it is a national disgrace that they have to do so. americans are angry about this. the president said let's fix that. >> does that make a difference that the president sa